MLB Teams: From faves to Braves

For some time I’ve been contemplating my attachments and allegiances to all 30 major league baseball teams. The list is fluid as the years go by, although the Tribe is always No. 1. The list is influenced mainly by where I’ve lived and the franchises I’ve been able to follow regularly. Other factors — such as who beat whom, uniform styles, favorite players, radio announcers — enter the equation. (Compiled summer 2009)

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8 responses to “MLB Teams: From faves to Braves”

I am mad that the negro league ballplayers were thought of as less than “white” in a segragast society. I am a white boy from north of Chicago (Fox Lake, Il.) that grew up loving to watch Mays, Banks, Minoso, Aparicio, Robinson (Frank), Oliva, Gibson, Marichal, among others, and especially my all time favorite Roberto Clemente play. They played with an ease that made me love the game and its history. Sure I had white hero’s: like Yaz, Tony C., Kaline, Mantle on the downslope of his career, B Robinson, Gary Peters, Tommy John, Joel Horlen, Hoyt Whilhelm, Ken Berry ( to name a few lesser known the heros of the ’67 White Sox) but they weren’t the caliber of the great black players of the time. That was to me the begining of the greatest baseball ever played. It was pure and exciting in its own form. Money killed the game. It is now way to sensational for my taste. I quit watching in ’92 (except when the White Sox won the big show).
You have listed some teams that you loathe. Why? Do you know the history of those franchises? If you knew what Branch Rickey did for the game I would be willing to bet it would lift two of your bottom three out of the loathing state. The fifties/sixties Braves had some of the best teams ever to play the game. Although I share your dislike of Teddy. The sixties was a time when the black player had nothing to feel insecure about on the field because his talent would keep him there. A different story for the time but no one could deny his greatness on the field. This is the time the black man came of age, and baseball was right in the middle of that great revolution. I just wish in 1890 when Cap Anson had the chance to turn it around for the black man he would have had the balls to do it. You would have had a landscape filled with different hero’s and certainly a differnt US.

Thanks a bunch for the comments. It sounds as if we’re from the same era, although you may be just a tad older than I am. My parents always told me that my first favorite ballplayer was Minnie Minoso, whose last name I apparently couldn’t quite pronounce. It must have come out “Mimosa.”

I absolutely know the history of those teams on my “loathe” list, which is really more a tongue-in-cheek thing. The Braves, example. I lived in Milwaukee for a while, and retroactively I love the franchise of Spahn and Sain and pray for rain, of “Bushville wins” and so forth. The Cardinals? I used to listen to Harry Caray broadcast their games on KMOX, which must have been in the late 60s or early 70s. I was crazy for Stan Musial, although he was out of the game before I really began to understand it.

And the Dodgers? I know all about the Brooklyn days – ‘dem Bums – and the team’s heart-rending move West. Branch Rickey – God bless him.

I hope you don’t literally mean that you quit watching baseball in ’92. The game certainly has its flaws, but its humanness to me just makes it all the more fascinating and endearing.

Gotta love the A’s for thier winning history and tenacity in the current market. I’ve never even given a thought to the other teams in the league, let alone the N.L…..I think this is one reason you might be a better man than me, cuz I only make room for the green and gold in my house and only tolerate the Giants because my son is misguided and foolish. lol…..pretty sure I must have adopted him…..WD